Alone on Alternia
by DJVennalyn
Summary: A fanfiction following the ancestors on Alternia. I use the names of the Alpha trolls as the majority of the ancestors names, seeing as it doesn't make sense for the Disciple to be called that originally etc. It follows the canonical timeline for the most part, but I am adding some other events just to flesh it out since not much is known about them.
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER 1**

Porrim shifted her carrying sack to a more comfortable position on her hip and glanced around the large cavern, looking for the special mineral she had been sent to collect for the grub mother. _'I need to return with this soon, where is it?' _she thought to herself. She walked on in several miles, still searching, with no sound to accompany her except for the occasional squeal of a grub facing it's trials and the steady drip from the stalactites above. Porrim glanced up in irritation, as a drop of water hit her nose, wrinkling it in irritation. Then she stopped. _'The mineral! It was right above my head the whole time!' _she thought gleefully. Porrim glanced around for a stalactite with a sufficient stalagmite beneath it, and scampered nimbly across the rocks towards it. She was beginning to climb when she heard a high, keening wail, one that shouldn't be heard this late in the season. She froze. If a lupus came by now to collect the young grub, she would be dead.

The wail continued for several minutes, despite the fact that a lusus sympathetic to this grub's blood color should have come by now. Porrim glanced around warily, looking to see if there was one waiting to kill her. When it was evident that there wasn't one, she climbed down from the stalagmite and jogged over to the edge of the pit where the wailing had come from. She peered down into it and struggled to make something out from the shadowy depths. The grub stopped wailing when it noticed her, and stood very still. Porrim glanced around one last time, and slid into the deep crater. the bottom was sticky with viscous fluid, but relatively flat. Porrim searched the crater for the grub, her Jade eyes adjusting to the dim light quickly.

It was finally a small squeak that alerted her to the presence of the grub. It was hiding behind the shattered remnants of it's own dirty egg. She tenderly reached out and picked it up, careful to not squish it. She brought it up to where she could see and gasped, almost dropping the grub. At first it had seemed to be a rust blood but, upon further investigation, was a bright red hue that Porrim had never even heard of. "No wonder no lusus came to you little one." Porrim murmured to the grub. "What'll I do with you?" the grub didn't answer, just looking at her with wide, ruby eyes. "Well I can't just leave you here…" she hesitated, her maternal instinct kicking in. "but I can't keep you either."

The grub's aural canals twitched, and it's head glanced up and looked towards the direction Porrim had come from, towards the Mother Grub where all of the Jadebloods resided. Porrim whipped her head around and listened intently for anything that the grub's heightened hearing could pick up that she could not. After a moment of the usual silence, a quiet rumbling of footsteps became evident. "Fuck**. **Looks like my decision has been made for me." Porrim looked back at the grub in her arms, and then back up at the rapidly approaching footsteps. She deliberated for a moment longer, but the threat of what would happen just for coming near the grub was too great. Tucking the grub carefully into her carrying sack resting comfortably at her hip, she turned away from the caverns she had lived her whole life in. She ran out of the crater and towards the exit. The footsteps behind her sped up, but Porrim was fast and had a head start. She was close to the exit to the outside. The one that only grubs who've passed the trial and their lusii are supposed to pass through. The one that she was about to escape through.

Porrim saw it and put on one final burst of speed, leaving her pursuers in the dust. Even if they had been able to catch up, once she was out of the caverns she was safe. Jadebloods weren't allowed to leave the caverns for any reason no matter what on pain of death. She pushed out of the opening into the dim moonlight, and a chill rand down her spine. "What on Alternia have I just done?" she asked the night sky. Looking at the moon for the first time in her life, she only sighed. "Mother Grub forgive me." Porrim pulled the grub out of her bag. it curled it's legs together, and looking at her with wide eyes it purred. "What am I going to do with you?" she asked the grub. It, being a grub, didn't answer. She sighed again, not having expected it to. "What am I to call you?" Porrim searched her mind for a suitable name. "How about…Kankri? Yes, I think Kankri sounds good. Don't worry baby kankri, mama Porrim's gonna take care of you." She held the grub tight and looked towards the horizon. After glancing back at the caverns one last time to last her a lifetime, she began walking towards the horizon. "I'll be your family now…"


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

Porrim drew the cloak around her, and checked to make sure the grub was safely tucked into her carrying sack. She moved quietly from stall to stall, weaving in and out of various low-blooded trolls. The highest blood color that could be seen in this part of town so far from the docks was honey-colored, no one higher than that was stupid or desperate enough to come here and practically hand themselves over to be mugged and murdered.

Porrim quietly selected several items and left the money with the sellertroll before slipping off to the next stall, her purchases clutched close to her body in a carrier basket, eyes always wary of pickpockets and street urchins that might try and lift her carrying sack or basket off of her. She kept her head down and her hood up, not wanting to reveal the extravagant garb of the keepers of the Mother Grub that she was still wearing.

She walked past an alley and heard a group of drunken rust-blooded trolls catcalling her. She growled and kept walking, never moving her eyes from her path. She moved onto the next stall and made her selections. She was about to put the money down in front of the sellertroll, but he stopped her with his wrinkled hand. "No, it's gonna cost you more than that doll." he rasped, a slimy grin on his face.

Porrim shuddered. "This is the price you're advertising it for, this is the price I'll pay." she said with as much confidence as she could muster.

"See, that's not how it works pretty lady. The price just went up." the rust blood leaned forwards, and Porrim could feel his breath hot on her face, and smell the stench of rotting food. "If you can't afford it, there are always…_other _ways to pay." he said with a meaningful glance downwards. Porrim bristled.

She threw the cloth she had been holding back down onto the stall. "I would never pay you like that, not in the lifetime of a fish troll." she spat.

He shrugged and leaned back nonchalantly. "Fine then, whatever floats your boat lady. But if you change your mind…well you know where to find me." he said with a wink.

Porrim shuddered and made her way quickly away from his stall and back out of the marketplace into the wild surrounding the town. She wanted to get away from that creepy troll as fast as she could, on top of the fact that it looked like it might rain soon and she needed to make a shelter.

Porrim huddled in the small lean-to made of broken trees as the storm raged around them. The flimsy wood of the lean-to didn't do much in ways of protection, and she was doing her best to shelter the grub from the wind and rain. _'Did I do the right thing? Is this really worth it?' _she wondered as another piece of wood was flung at her back by the raging wind. Porrim glanced down at the miraculously sleeping bundle in her arms and smiled. _'For Kankri, yes.' _

The storm carried on for at least another hour, if not more. When it was over it was all Porrim could do to somewhat rebuild their shoddy shelter before falling asleep holding Kankri in her arms. He wasn't the tiny grub she had left the cavern with only a few months ago; he had grown somewhat and looked like he was going to pupate in only a little longer. When she had found him he should've been much bigger already, but due to his lack of a lusus he had been severely malnourished. Now it wasn't much easier to feed him properly, but Porrim gave him almost all of the food she caught and bartered for in towns.

What seemed like only moments later to Porrim she was awoken by a noise nearby. She draped her cloak over Kankri to hide him before sitting up to assess the danger. She crawled out of the lean-to that was surprisingly still standing and looked around to see what had caused the sound. The rustling continued. Porrim followed it into the bushes, her small bone knife held at the ready. She heard a noise directly behind her and turned, immediately being impaled by a spear. She gasped, clutching her stomach. The spear was roughly pulled out and there was brutish laughter from all sides of her. Four rust-blooded trolls emerged from the foliage around her.

They smirked, and one of them spoke. "We heard you was disrespectin' Marcus earlier. Well, this is what happens to those who disrespect him."

"They get taken out!" one of them jumped forwards with excitement. A glare from the others shut him up and he stepped back into his former position.

"Now we're gonna be nice and leave you here to die instead of bringin' you back to have some fun with. Enjoy your death, you—" he glanced down to call her by the color of your blood and froze. "Shit, man, we killed a jadeblood! We're gonna get in so much trouble if anyone finds out, run!" the leader shouted, and the group scattered back to the town.

"Idiots." she grumbled. "If they had any common sense in their thinkpan the would've hid my body." she grinned mirthlessly. "Looks like this is it." she stumbled back to the lean-to to check on Kankri one last time. She could already feel the life leaving her as she looked on the sleeping grub. "Goodbye…Kankri…" Porrim closed her eyes, laying with one hand on the grub that she had, in the end, sacrificed her life for. She let out one last rattling breath, and she died.

Several hours later, she was awoken by the sound of a grub shrieking in her ear. Porrim sat up and groaned. "What the heck? Didn't I die?" she asked no one in particular, looking at her stomach. Her clothes were torn and bloodstained where she had been stabbed, but there was no cut. She reached out absentmindedly to stroke the hungry grub beside her and was shocked to see something strange out of the corner of her eye. She looked at her arm. "I'm…glowing?" she asked. Suddenly, it dawned on her. Something she had forgotten since she left the caverns not so long ago. "I'm a rainbow drinker! I forgot that when a Jadeblood dies by unnatural causes they come back as rainbow drinkers to continue their care of the Mother Grub!" she smacked a hand to her forehead. "How could I be so forgetful!"

Kankri nudged at her leg insistently and keened, a high, wailing note. Porrim's maternal instincts kicked in. "Alright, let's get you some food." and for the moment, she didn't think about the implications of being a rainbow drinker, only that she was still alive to take care of Kankri for another day.


End file.
